Internet Explorer Vs. Firefox

The world of Web browsing has reached a tipping point.
Microsoft
's Internet Explorer browser has been and remains the de facto standard for Internet users. But for the first time since the late '90s, when Redmond quashed Netscape, Microsoft has some real competition.

Alternative browsers have been around for years, including Netscape, which was long ago absorbed by the
Time Warner
conglomerate. The popular open source browser Mozilla is based on Netscape, a program called Opera has a following, and
Apple Computer
has its own browser, dubbed Safari.

But there's a new browser from the makers of Mozilla, called Firefox, that's getting lots of attention--and not just from the geeky set. The Mozilla Foundation open source project, which is funded by Time Warner,
IBM
and
Sun Microsystems
, launched Firefox version 0.9 on June 15. Firefox 1.0 is due out by early November.

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"For the first time in a while, we're seeing real momentum behind a browser other than IE," says Steve O'Grady, an analyst at enterprise software outfit Redmonk, based in Bath, Me. "Consumers are starting to use Firefox, and that has developers considering both platforms when they're building Web sites."

Internet users began switching in earnest during the summer after several security problems emerged with IE, which of course is built into Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows operating system. Microsoft
issued a patch for Windows XP, that platform's most recent iteration, but users complain that IE hasn't truly been updated since 2001. Anyone using Windows 98 or Windows 2000 who wants the most secure system has to upgrade to XP and download the patch, called Service Pack 2.

"Starting this summer we've been getting between 200,000 and 300,000 downloads a day," says Mozilla's director of engineering,
Chris
Hofmann
Chris Hofmann
. That's up from an average of about 70,000 daily downloads. Hofmann estimates that Mozilla and Firefox browsers have a total of about 25 million users.

Firefox is lauded by fans for its download speed and a superior user interface, and users say that its pop-up blocker is one of the best out there. It offers tabbed browsing, which means that users can jump back and forth between different sites with only one window open, and live bookmarks, which show users the most recent headlines on their favorite sites and lets them go directly to those articles.

But the biggest challenge facing anyone who wants to take on IE is that most Web sites are built to work best with Microsoft's IE simply because it's what sits on most PCs. That means some sites may not look quite right or may not be accessible at all via a browser other than IE.

It's good news for Firefox and its fans that developers' attitudes are changing, but reversing Microsoft's dominance remains a long shot. Both browsers have had security problems and issued patches, and each has other pros and cons. Herewith, a head-to-head comparison.